Don’t Be a Social Media Zombie

Zombies! and Ghosts! and Vampires! Oh My! Halloween fever has taken over. But if you think about it, you do see all three of these personality types showing up in social media. Let me explain –

Zombie: What is the first thing you think of when I say the word zombie? Do you picture a mindless walker shuffling down the street looking for brains? I know I do. You can spot a social media zombie almost the same way. The Zombie will utilize the simplest way possible to get content out to the streams.

Automation.

When the zombies set up auto Tweets from Facebook (and vice versa) or set up RSS feeds to post to Twitter whenever a new post is published by others, it is always an easy spot. A stream of 15 posts in a row by one person all spread one minute apart. A Tweet asking you to “like this post if” (and often with no link). Or a Facebook post full of @messages and #Hashtags?

And have you ever seen the #TEAMFOLLOWBACK Twitter accounts?

Hold onto your brains when you see them coming and run!

Ghost: Now you see it, now you don’t. A ghost user is one who creates a business account because they
”should” be involved in social media. They soon disappear into the internet ether never to be seen again.

Ghosts are also seen (or not seen.. as it were) not replying to comments. Customers (past, present and future) are out there talking about brands. Talking about and directly to you, asking questions, complaining, and sometimes even saying nice things. Like Alex Forrest, social media can not be ignored. Social media – especially for business, needs to be used. If you commit to creating a social media presence, you need to commit to using it.

Vampire: These content stealing blood sucking fiends take your hard work and give themselves credit. The worst Vampire is a content scraper. They take the content right off your blog and post it as their own. If you do not get permission & give credit – that’s plagiarism. This happened to Peg Fitzpatrick over the summer – and she did something about it.

Note: Some sites like Business2Community and SocialMediaToday do syndicate, but they have permission to do so. Even this post is a reposting of one I did on a company blog.

This has also been known to happen with photography. When looking for images to post in a blog you can’t just do a right-click save-as and call that photo your own. (All the photos used in this post were purchased images from a stock image site) Be sure to use either original, purchased or credited images with your posts.

The third act of vampirism, is not as serious as the other two mentioned – but it is a big Twitter faux pas. When you are sharing the content of others – be sure to attribute the author. A quick RT @ or via @ the person who wrote or originally shared the post is the best form of netiquette.

Those are the beasties that go bump in the social media night and they are all easily defeatable. It is just a matter of effort, commitment and credit.

Carrie Keenan is a Social Media Community Manager and blogger out of Appleton, WI. I work with both B2B and B2C clients, but I prefer to call them all P2P. I am actively involved in the Wisconsin Irish community as the social media chair for Oshkosh Irish Fest. I’m a proud geek and book nerd, lover of big words, rhyme & alliteration.

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So exciting to see posts like this because I think it means we are finally starting to move the social Internet out of its baby phase and into some more closely resembling being…. social!

I think we are entering an exciting time where the Internet will really start to become more conversational – instead of just a forum for people to spew information outward. That means we can start building real communities.

Great post!

-Jake

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Ricardo Caicedo

1 year 5 months ago

Loved the post, especially because of the Halloween theme.

I'm guilty of almost becoming a ghost in some social media profiles I had, so what I did was scale back. Best to be good at a few than mediocre in many.
My recent post Minerals in Green Tea Leaves